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Design Ethos Recap
As part of the increasing effort by SCAD to encourage knowledge-sharing around the topic of sustainable design, the college held its 1st Design Ethos conference this past weekend. For an inaugural event they managed to gather a veritable who’s who of the eco-design world with names like John Bielenberg of Project M, Joshua Onysko of Pangea and Eric Benson of renourish to name just a few. The event’s main goal is to,
“bring together design educators and practitioners who are wrestling with these difficult issues in an attempt to help define the next step in graphic design’s continuing evolution.”
This past Saturday I got a chance to take part in one of the panel discussions at entitled “The Triple Bottom Line and the Need for a New Professionalism.”There I had a chance to share some of the challenges and successes we’ve experience working with a range of corporate and non-profit clients and transition ourselves into a more sustainable practice. But the real treat was in the Q&A afterwards when I shared the stage with Brian Dougherty of Celery Design, Cheryl Heller of Heller Communications Design and Linda Doherty of Citizen Studio.
Night of The Living Trekkies
Another fun project we just wrapped!
This is the trailer for a the new book from Quirk Books.
Talk about a crazy/AWESOME departure from our usual fare! Thanks to our buddies Opie Cooper (who was a part of our 48hr Film Project) and Justin Lutsky (who directed Action Hero’s Guide to Saving Lives) we got to play around in zombie-territory for a bit.
It was a full group effort from our team – James did the branding for the trailer and the set graphics, Drew did motion graphics, Phil did set extensions (3D / effects) and along with our friend Akash Ramlogan consulted on the visual effects for the zombie kills. And I used my role as associate producer as an excuse to just annoy everyone.
Oh…if you pay close attention you may recognize a few familiar faces from Road Tripping.
UPDATE 09-24-2010:
To say we’ve been thrilled by the response this trailer has gotten would be an understatement! Considering all the time and careful thought that went into the project, our ultimate gratification comes from knowing that the die-hard fans of both Star Trek and all things zombie-related have given it a massive thumbs up. After 10 days YouTube the video has received over 100,000 views, and more importantly a lot of passionate support.
I think those long hours and late nights paid off!
Passion for What You Do
I was inspired this morning by a post entitled “Messy is Good” on The Creative Coast blog by a great friend, Rad Harrell. In the post Rad talks about embracing a bit of chaos in the quest for solving a problem. Wise words. And I’ll add to that – the thing that keeps us moving through the mess is the passion.
Passion is the reason we excel. It’s that thing that causes us to make the right decisions even when we’re worried they might seem foolish. It forces us to put one foot in front the other when the results aren’t as sexy as we’d hoped. It reminds us where we’re headed even when it feels like we’re taking the long route. Passion is absolutely infectious. And fun.
Wouldn’t the world be a far better/more enjoyable place if we all sought out that thing we were truly passionate about and then DID IT?!
Here to inspire you this weekend is a man who just rocked my world with his passion for fizzy stuff….
(Thanks to James for sharing this video)
Click here to purchase some these awesome beverages online.
And, don’t forget to take a moment tomorrow to be grateful for the amazing life you have. Enjoy it.
Road Tripping – 48Hour Film Project WINNER, Savannah 2010
So we finally got the film and “the making of” online!
(Click on them if you want to watch in HD on Vimeo)
Here now for your enjoyment is
Road Tripping by 8bit RAMpage
Road Tripping from Paragon Design Group on Vimeo.
The culmination of our efforts after 2 days with almost no sleep. A fun weekend and a victory for our loco team.
And a look the at how we did it…
ROAD TRIPPING-Behind the Scenes – 8bitRampage from 8bit RAMpage on Vimeo.
Monster Drinks, Coffee and Adrenaline.. and that’s just the first night. Here we are cranking out a movie in two days!
Our secret to winning – don’t dare sleep…don’t even tempt yourself by blinking.
48 Hour Film Project
Three weekends ago, a small group of intrepid explorers, dubbed themselves “8bit RAMpage” and set out on an adventure to conquer an idea they’d been talking about for years…
That group consisted of the Paragon team (Phil, Drew and me, with design support from James), Akash Ramlogan, Blake Ellis, Opie Cooper, Hannah Bryan, Murray Wilson, Matt Adams and Sherry Spencer. The adventure was the making of a “just for fun” film project that we finally did, thanks to the 48Hour Film Project.
At the screening minus James and Phil
The assignment, given on Friday (July 9th) at 7:30 pm was:
Genre: Road Movie
Prop: an apple
Character: Realtor named Simon/Simone Turkana
Line: “I know what I know”
All the teams shared the same requirements except for the genre. The deadline was of course, 7:30pm on Sunday!
We’d done as much prep as was possible during the week — had a number of locations scouted, some great options for our cast and what we felt was a pretty kick-ass (albeit mostly out-of-practice) team.
2010 Telly Awards
Things have been fairly busy around here as you already know, but I had to take a moment to say “well done” to the amazing creatives I work with. They make me proud all the time, and this is no exception…WE JUST WON 3 BRONZE TELLY AWARDS!!
(Number 3 isn’t here yet…and yes, my desk is a disaster.)
In case you’re unfamiliar with the Telly Awards…
“The Telly Awards honor the very best local, regional, and cable television commercials and programs, as well as the finest video and film productions, and work created for the Web.”
Each Telly is awarded on individual merit by the Silver Telly Council, and the winners are awarded silver or bronze awards based upon the combined scoring of the judges. It’s a national competition so we are really appreciative of the vote of confidence by our peers in the broadcast design industry.
We entered 4 pieces of work…so I feel pretty great that we won 3. (And no I won’t share which project didn’t win, because that’s a bummer.)
So back to the winners….
A Presidential “Thank You”
I was truly honored to meet President Obama back in March, and took the opportunity to give him one of our portfolio books along with a note from the entire team.
Needless to say….this will be framed and hung in my office.
Friday Cuteness: Oktapodi
Came across this incredibly cute short today and thought I’d share it as a way of saying I hope you have a swell weekend…oh, and sorry we’ve been too busy to blog!
This animated short was a graduate student project done by students from Gobelins L’Ecole de L’Image, and nominated for Best Animated Short Film in the 2009 Oscars.
Laptops Needed for a Good Cause
I love the fact that over the years we’ve gotten to know so many generous people who care about making a difference in the lives of others. If I was ever tempted to become completely self-involved, those people would inspire it right out of me. Today I thought I’d share a story about one of them, Malcolm Boyanton.
Malcolm is a friend and colleague based in Seattle who works for a software company, and I noticed recently that he’s been requesting old laptops. I thought I’d get in touch with him to see what was afoot.
Well it turns out that he’d been planning a trip to South America, and after hearing about the earthquake in Chile (and first-hands reports of dire need from his buddy Ariel Stamm who has been there for the past month) he’s decided to make the first part of his trip a philanthropic stop in that country. And he’s doing it by putting his geeky skills to use.
“There are a lot of schools and families without access to any computers. So, when I leave in a few weeks I want to stuff my bag full of supplies and laptops. I’ve got a couple that were donated and then I’ll likely buy a couple more off people I know or craigslist….All laptops will be given out to rural schools with little or no access to computers.”
Paragon has PMS
Project Management System (PMS)
Online software makes our lives easier. Managing projects, contacts, documents, files, tasks, and milestones plus being able to share this information with a client so they can see progress and participate is invaluable.
So why not use it? Actually we do. Basecamp, which is an amazing web app by 37signals, has plans starting at $24/month. That’s really affordable if you’re juggling around 15 projects at a time.
Here in Paragonland, we might have as many 25 active projects, 5 projects in client limbo, 15 on the way, plus a massive archive we’d like to keep handy for reference. The plan to fit our needs is around $149/month. That’s still pretty affordable, but we’re always on the hunt for a $0 option if one exists.
So what’s a boy to do?
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